Celebrate Blogger’s birthday by moving to the Blog Peoria Project

August 18, 2009
By Billy Dennis

blogpeoiconSunday is the 10th anniversary of Blogger, the little company started by Pyra Labs that opened the floodgates for blogging and citizen journalism. This free service let people go to a Web site, write someone in an empty form field, his a “publish” button, and those words magically appeared on a Website. No hand-coding of HTML involved. ANYONE could do it.

Suddenly everyone had the power of the press.

I won’t go into the ramifications this had on democracy and the printing press-based media. But the ramifications were GOOD.

But Blogger and Prya Labs ought to get a Nobel Prize.

But it’s been 10 years and now, Blogger sucks. Granted, it sucks less than it did before, with nearly daily outages and lost posts. But it still sucks, relatively speaking.

Consider this site. It’s a wish list that long time users want Blogger (read “Google,” the company that owns Blogger). They want the ability to create stand-alone Pages (just like WordPress has had for years). They want support for Gravatars (which WordPress has had for years). They want to be able to add captions to images (which WordPress has had for years). They want a wide selection of themes that work on wider monitors (which Blogger has had for years). They want an easy-to-use MORE button (which Blogger has had for years).

We’ve got that HERE. You can get NOW here at The Blog Peoria Project that Blogger MIGHT offer in the future. Blogger won’t reply to your email with a phone call if you ask nice. Blogger won’t go out and look for a theme or a plugin you want to try. Blogger won’t take a look at your HTML. Blogger won’t help you migrate your site somewhere else. Trust me on that. I hate to lose members, but I am committed to the idea that bloggers OWN their own posts, pics and comments.

And Blogger won’t tell lawsuit-threatening attorneys to take a hike.

And blogger won’t help you syndicate your site. Take a look at the expanded blogroll now in use at Peoria Pundit. I cannot do that for ANY site hosted by blogger. I can do it with any self-hosted WordPress or Typepad site. Not blogger.

And Blogger doesn’t give Peoria-area bloggers the power to link to nearly 50 of their neighbors by dragging a “Global Recent Posts” widget or a “Global Recent Comments” widget onto their sidebar.

So hears MY deal: To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Blogger.com, I am extending my help to ANYONE who wants to migrate away from Blogger to WordPress here at the Blog Peoria Project. I’ll help you move your posts, your comments and your photos. I’ll set up redirection so that people visiting your old Blogger posts will be sent to your shiny new WordPress site.

I have never charged anyone to blog here, and I don’t charge for support.

If you want to move, contact me.

Crossposted from The Blog Peoria Project.

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3 Responses to “ Celebrate Blogger’s birthday by moving to the Blog Peoria Project ”

  1. Posts about themes as of August 19, 2009 | All About WordPress on August 19, 2009 at 3:04 am

    [...] for your daily projects. Saving budgets and&#32&#115&#112reading the prosperity worldwide. Celebrate Blog&#103&#101&#114’s birthday by moving to the Blog Peoria Project&#32– peoriapundi&#116&#46&#99om 08/19/2009 Sunday [...]

  2. diane on August 19, 2009 at 7:45 am

    Celebrate Bloggers birthday by moving to Blog Peoria? Doesn’t that seem a little counter-intuitive? ;)

    • Billy Dennis on August 19, 2009 at 7:48 am

      Not if you read the post, Diane.

      ;-)